Our Moon Has Blood Clots

"Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family, who were Kashmiri Pandits: the Hindu minority within a Muslim-majority Kashmir that was by 1990 becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of 'Azaadi' [freedom] from India. The heartbreaking story of Kashmir has so far been told mainly through the prism of the brutality of the Indian security forces, the pro-independence demands of Muslim separatists or India and Pakistan's rivalry. But there is another part of the story that has remained unrecorded and buried. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the untold chapter in the story of Kashmir, in which hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were tortured, killed and forced to leave their homes by Islamist militants, and to spend the rest of their lives in exile in their own country. Rahul Pandita has written a deeply personal, powerful and unforgettable story of history, home and loss."--Page 4 of cover.

Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family. They were Kashmiri Pandits-the Hindu minority within a Muslim-majority Kashmir that was by 1990 becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of 'Azaadi' from India. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the story of Kashmir, in which hundreds of thousands of Pandits were tortured, killed and forced to leave their homes by Islamist militants, and forced to spend the rest of their lives in exile in their own country. Pandita has written a deeply personal, powerful and unforgettable story of history, home and loss.

With direct access to the top Maoist leadership, Rahul Pandita provides an authoritative account of how a handful of men and women, who believed in the idea of revolution, entered Bastar in Central India in 1980 and created a powerful movement that New Delhi now terms as India's biggest internal security threat. It traces the circumstances due to which the Maoist movement entrenched itself in about 10 states of India, carrying out deadly attacks against the Indian establishment in the name of the poor and the marginalised. It offers rare insight into the lives of Maoist guerillas and also of the Adivasi tribals living in the Red zone. Based on extensive on-ground reportage and exhaustive interviews with Maoist leaders including their supreme commander Ganapathi, Kobad Ghandy and others who are jailed or have been killed in police encounters, this book is a combination of firsthand storytelling and intrepid analysis.

Twenty-five years ago, in the winter of 1990, about four hundred thousand Pandits of Kashmir were forced to leave Kashmir, their homeland, to save their lives when militancy erupted there. Even today, they continue to live as 'internally displaced migrants' in their own country. While most Kashmiri Pandits have now carved a niche for themselves in different parts of India, several thousands are still languishing in migrant camps in and around Jammu. The stories of their struggles and plight have remained untold for years. The authors of the memoirs in this anthology belong to four generations. Those who were born and brought up in Kashmir, and fled while they were in their forties and fifties; those who lingered on in their homes in Kashmir despite the threat to their lives; those who got displaced in their teens; and those who were born in migrant camps in exile. These narratives explore several aspects of the history, cultural identity and existence of the Kashmiri Pandits.These are untold narratives about the persecution of Pandits in Kashmir during the advent of militancy in 1989, the killings and kidnappings, loss of homeland, uprootedness, camp-life, struggle, survival, alienation and an ardent yearning to return to their land. These are stories about the re-discovery of their past, their ancestry, culture, and roots and moorings.

Basharat Peer was a teenager when the separatist movement exploded in Kashmir in 1989. Over the following years countless young men, seduced by the romance of the militant, fuelled by feelings of injustice, crossed over the Line of Control to train in Pakistani army camps. Peer was sent off to boarding school in Aligarh to keep out of trouble. He finished college and became a journalist in Delhi. But Kashmir—angrier, more violent, more hopeless—was never far away. In 2003, the young journalist left his job and returned to his homeland to search out the stories and the people which had haunted him. In Curfewed Night he draws a harrowing portrait of Kashmir and its people. Here are stories of a young man’s initiation into a Pakistani training camp; a mother who watches her son forced to hold an exploding bomb; a poet who finds religion when his entire family is killed. Of politicians living in refurbished torture chambers and former militants dreaming of discotheques; of idyllic villages rigged with landmines, temples which have become army bunkers, and ancient sufi shrines decapitated in bomb blasts. And here is finally the old story of the return home—and the discovery that there may not be any redemption in it. Lyrical, spare, gutwrenching and intimate, Curfewed Night is a stunning book and an unforgettable portrait of Kashmir in war.

This book The Odyssey of Kashmiri Pandits presents the pathetic life of Kashmiri Pandits in exile. The Mass Exodus from their homes in the year 1990, have left them as refugees in their own country. The original inhabitants of Kashmir, scattered all over the world, are now haunted by nostalgia of Paradise on Earth. They were hounded out, after inflicting taunts, physical abuse, miseries, loot, and selective killing. The exiled community hopes to go back to their home land some day. What could have been the reasons for all these miseries? Were the killers caught?

The sinister roots of the strike, they would discover, are several decades deep and can be traced to one man - Masood Azhar - and the empire of terror he created in Kashmir.

The spiralling crisis in Jammu and Kashmir; the Naxalite-Maoist menace that seems to be intensifying with every passing day; the disturbing reach of proxy governments run by militant groups in Manipur and Nagaland – today, a quarter of India is being held hostage by violence and anarchy. What has pushed the country, which has otherwise held together through seemingly insurmountable odds in the past, to the edge? Who and what is responsible for the state of affairs as it stands today? In a series of dispatches from the epicentres of what they call the country’s ‘battle zones’, Neelesh Misra and Rahul Pandita unveil the tensions, frustrations and heartbreaks, and the challenges and justifications, that are everyday realities in these troubled regions. Civil administrators talk about the widespread misappropriation of development funds in tribal and remote areas; security and police personnel describe extreme confrontations in the face of inadequate training and equipment; rebel ranks and former insurgents reveal how unemployment, lack of education and rampant exploitation have fuelled their defiance against the establishment and encouraged secessionist activities; self-styled vigilantes assert their need to provide what they consider ‘security’ and ‘justice’ in areas that have seen little of either. And, at the heart of the on-going turmoil, ordinary people mourn the loss of their loved ones – to starvation, lack of healthcare facilities and militancy – even as they voice their demand to be heard. The stories are many; the cast varied. Yet, collectively, they present an alarming picture of systemic failure on the part of the Indian state. A potent reminder of the mistakes that the government of India cannot afford to repeat, The Absent State is a work of great significance – an essential read for anyone who wants to make sense of the tumult of our times.